Quality Concerns in Basic Primary Education in Two Rural Districts of Zimbabwe: an Interrogation of Perceptions of Critical Stakeholders

Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has been priding itself of a high literacy rate among its population, and has been producing what has been termed high quality products in the form of teachers, doctors, nurses, among others, who are in high demand in Africa and beyond. This has been largely due to what Harrison as cited in Doherty(1994) calls the massification of education in the post-colonial era, which saw all young people of school going age accessing primary education. But the question that comes to mind is, “to what extent can mass education provide quality education? Or is it a question of elite education being written a little larger " as Neave(1985) and Harrison(1994) say? A non-governmental organisation (NGO) , Save the Children Norway-Zimbabwe(SCNZ), has developed an interest to promote and enhance basic quality education in two rural districts of Zimbabwe, Bikita (in Masvingo Province) and Rushinga(in Mashonaland Central Province). To this effect, the authors were engaged to carry out a study in the two districts in 2003/2004. The project was: Needs Assessment Study on Access to Basic Quality Education in Zimbabwe: The case for Bikita and Rushinga Districts. This presentation is based on that study project and a review of literature an the debate on quality education in general